Any Old Port In A Storm

There is an old saying: the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Case in point: my friend WAMK is willing to ally himself with Pravda and Ted Rall in his effort to trash our President.

Completely unfair but amusing conclusion: It's not that WAMK wants a communist dictatorship or an America ruled by extreme left-wing doctrine, just that he'd prefer them to a successful Obama term. Seems reasonable to me! AND Ralph Nader!

Don't Trust Things From Chicago

Word had it that popular Chicago radio personality "Mancow" may have faked his own waterboarding. I'm disappointed because he had come to the conclusion that it really is torture, which was a reversal from him. Still, we have Christopher Hitchens, whose waterboarding was authentic, and he came to the same conclusion.

Hannity need to be the tiebreaker on this one, I think.

Another Reason That Rush Should Be Acknowledged

Acknowledged as the leader of the Republican Party, that is.

If I were a novelist, I'd have made that character leader because it's good foreshadowing. His last name sounds just like Limbo, you see. Subconsciously it prepares the reader for how the Republican characters are going to spend the next several years.

A Sitcom From An Alternate Universe

http://www.nbc.com/yo-teach/index.shtml

But weirdly, it's a lot like our own.

One Thing I Was Able To Tease Out Of My Friend At the Embassy

I brought up the whole Monica Lewinsky scandal, and he confirmed what I always thought - observers outside the US thought the reaction to it was weirdly out of scale. Tabloid attention, maybe even a word in congress condemning Clinton's behavior, but impeachment? Nobody out of the reach of Fox News even understands how that happened.

Proves to me that news bias CAN be dangerous.

Crazy Far-Left Moonbat Gives Unwanted Advice

Uncle!

Speaking of the court, I'm disappointed in our own California Supremes for upholding the Gay Marriage ban vote of last year, even though they at least allowed those married couples to remain married.

I won't pretend to be able to judge this on its legal merits so I defer to the court's judgement on whether it's a sound decision. I remain uncomfortable with the idea that as a society we can vote on who gets human rights this year. Next year it will probably come up again and if there are cool Gays on TV we'll probably allow gay marriage. Then the following year if there is an unpopular Gay man, then we'll take the right away again.

Hey, the Jews got used to it, the Gays will too.

The Extreme Danger of Stocking The Court With Old White Males

Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, in a written statement, said Tuesday he's concerned Sotomayor has shown "personal bias based on ethnicity and gender."

"Judge Sotomayor will need to reassure the country that she will set aside her biases, uphold the rule of law and interpret the Constitution as written, not as she believes it should have been written," said Smith, who will have no vote in the matter, as the confirmation is a Senate matter.

Fox News website, yesterday.

The ethnicity and gender of the Supreme Court as it stands now is a little... let's call it monolithic, shall we? One woman on the bench, and she's said to be retiring this year. Still, maybe the people criticizing Sotomayor have legitimate legal soncerns having nothing to do with her hispanicity.

Deferring to people's own pronunciation of their names should obviously be our first inclination, but there ought to be limits. Putting the emphasis on the final syllable of Sotomayor is unnatural in English (which is why the president stopped doing it after the first time at his press conference), unlike my correspondent's simple preference for a monophthong over a diphthong, and insisting on an unnatural pronunciation is something we shouldn't be giving in to.

-Mark Krikorian, THE CORNER

Oh that big tent... there's a reason there's so much room in there. It's because they keep chasing out the hispanics, the blacks, the gays and anyone who voices an opinion they don't want to hear. Basically it's Rush and a bunch of people carrying Rush around.

This Shouldn't Have Kept Me Awake

7:22am PDT, en route to Los Angeles

More likely than not I had insomnia last night because it was the eve of travel. But the the thing that kept running through my mind was this: I blew the gag in my title on Wednesday.

The idea was, a joke concerning Shakespeare and gloves. My best association with gloves was Johnnie Cochrane's famous defense of OJ Simpson concerning that glove evidence, and my best association with Shakespeare is always iambic pentameter, the rhyme scheme that the sonnets are written in. Great concept, lousy execution because I wrote it in, I guess, “quantameter”? I used four beats when I should have used five. Ideally the title should have been something more like:

If the glove does not him truly fit
Then thou verily must he acquit.

It's a little long for a title, and I was still a little jet-lagged, so I suppose that's what made me think the original title worked. I hope to God that's not what was really keeping me awake though, because If I'm going to start worrying over the flaws in this blog so much that I lose sleep, well, I'll never sleep.

The Sun Sets On My Empire

At the intermission of WAITING FOR GODOT last night I met a girl who devoted a whole semester to it in college. "I'm so glad to meet you," I joked, "what the hell it it about?" She just shrugged. Its an impossible play which is why you need skilled actors to keep it alive for two hours. In this case it was Sir Ian McKellan and Patrick Stewart, who did the job admirably.

This is my last day in London. Tomorrow morning I board a big ol' jet airliner back to Los Angeles. I'm going to miss it but I'm realizing that I couldn't live in the city. London is the sister city of New York - it has the same relentless energy and it surely would drain the life outta me. Plus I'd be, you know, surrounded by foreigners. If I ever move to England, and I'd love to, I'd live in a less metropolitan area where I was the foreigner. "Look, it's that American chap," they'd say as I approached the pub. "I hope you remembered to cool off that beer for him."

Anyway, vacations always exhaust me and I'm looking forward to my old life, where I do the same things every day at the same time, cook my own food and am master of a tiny domain. Plus I'll enjoy the pleasant buzz of severe jet lag for a while. Happy bank holiday everyone!

(Pictures: the marquee on a cinema in Notting Hills; and the best directions ever. May I call your attention to the fifth one from the top?)

Local Boy Makes Good

Cognac is a sensualist's dream. You warm it up with your hands, then inhale and it assaults your nostrils. When you drink it, it's not how it tastes, it's how it feels, pleasantly burning your throat.

Cognac is especially good after a delicious homemade dinner served by gracious hosts. In this case Phil, our former classmate who is now a press attache to the US Embassy here. He's been in the business since the nineties, posted at a number of countries. My favorite, for the exotica of it, is Tunisia. Thankfully he's in London for the foreseeable future, which allowed me a chance to catch up with him, his lovely wife, and his two bilingual sons.

For a political junkie like me, it's disappointing that Phil has strong diplomatic training, because he wouldn't take any bait I threw to him to trash his boss or former bosses. Too bad, because bloggers live for stuff like that. The best I could get out of him is that he disagrees with me about the efficacy of Twitter; I think it's just dopey, he likes it and has found it useful.

He did say that the embassy is moving from Grosvenor Square in five years or so to someplace a little farther out of town (I can't remember where, and I'd heard it also on one of the walking tours) but he is puzzled by the reaction to it. It's true that the area is industrial and underdeveloped now, but as Phil wryly put it, "We're the anchor store." In five years time the place will be crowded with Burger Kings and Starbucks and Gaps. Just like Grosnevor square now, come to think of it.

The Game Is Afoot

Today's activity was the Sherlock Holmes walking tour. My feet are tired. Every time I go on a vacation I reach the point where I vow to never take a tour again, just hang out at Starbucks all day long only in a different place than usual. I think I'll float that idea for tomorrow. All we got booked is a show in the evening.

J.L., Bird

I want to take a moment before I go to bed to comment ok the ubiquity of Joanna Lumley in this country. She's on the news spearheading a campaign to redress the brave Gherkas who fought on Britains side during WW II. then she turns up on an episode of THE NEW AVENGERS from the early seventies.

They can't stop talking about her. I wouldn't be surprised if she's an MP by 2010. Though the way things are this week, I can be.

If The Glove Does Not Him Fit, Surely Then Thou Must Acquit **Updated W/Pics**

I'm chilling out after that most exhausting of travel activities, the bus tour. Today we went out of the reach of the tube to both Shakespeare's birthplace and Warwick Castle, both potent indictments of my own country's failure to produce more than three hundred years of recorded history.

Man, were they touristy! Shakespeare's birthplace presently sits across from Iago Jewelers and adjacent to a very nice gift shop. There is also a big garden on the spot where probably 2 other houses of similar size once stood. There's a nice place to get a Subway sandwich down the street and some decent Italian further. Fun fact takeaway about Shakespeare - his father was a wealthy glove-maker. Unlikely supposition: Shakespeare wore a t-shirt that said "I Hearteth Stratford-On-Avon."

(note the gorgeous weather in that picture! An hour later it was raining, hard; five minutes after that, gorgeous again. It's how the land stays green and verdant.)

Warwick Castle used to be home to King Henry the 8th, and is now an amusement park that smells like a thousand years of urine on the inside. They charge extra for a peek at the dungeon. In the castle itself, rooms are inhabited by waxwork dummies in action poses. King Henry only appears once, and this is admirable restraint considering he is everyone's favorite. They also have a mighty good young Winston Churchill, who I can add to the list of great men who were shorter than I. Fun fact takeway - as a young man, Churchill was pretty hot. Unlikely supposition: King Henry posed once with all six of his wives for a waxwork sculpture.

I'm too tired to upload the pictures, which are in my camera upstairs. Please feel free to envision.

**Update** okay, I have uploaded pictures.

Never Before Has a Boy Wanted More

Well, we've decided we didn't care for OLIVER either. The girl who played Nancy, who was picked off a reality show, could sing but not so much with the acting; Rowan Atkinson was merely as good a Fagin as I was and Burn Gorman's Bill Sykes couldn't shine our Bill's shoes. And of course the directing was a pale ghost of the show that Justine commanded. There are those who would consider this to be a biased judgment on our parts, but those people would be mistaken.

By the way, look at that logo. Is it my imagination or is this actually just a pale ripoff of the logo for Pizza Hut? Which serves, by the way, a pale imitation of pizza itself.

Torchwood continues to haunt me. The day I couldn't find the building they use in the show I DID find a copy of John Barrowman's biography at a bookstore. Then I discover as I read my program that Bill Sykes is played by Burn Gorman, a Torchwood cast member. He played the character who died early in series two but remained on the show an animated corpse for a very long time afterward. At this point I'd be very surprised if I'm not carried off by a pterodactyl after dinner.

In The Bank, Large Amounts

I'm waiting to meet friends for a matinée of OLIVER! starring Rowan Atkinson as Fagin. It's the role I made famous in high school.

We have been hearing that everyhing is so expensive in London, but it's not true. The recession rewards those crazy enough to travel by forcing discounts. Even Gordon Ramsey is said to be offering a little fixed price faire.

In other words if you've just been laid off and you're too depressed to start looking for work yet, come on down!

Almost Nothing Changes

I just spend the morning wandering around the Canary Wharf area, looking for TORCHWOOD headquarters. I failed. Perhaps the building was hidden using some scavenged alien tech.

So my adventure today amounted to an extended Mall walk, which is a pleasant enough way to spend a day off. Now I'm sitting in the Gloucester Arcade,a tube stop and the one place I know where I can find reliable free wireless. I'm also ogling this skinny blonde who runs a fashion kiosk. Which is kind of crazy. Where I come from, skinny blondes are given away in Crackerjack boxes.

Well, I guess I'll get back to the hotel and see if there are any messages.

YOUR FATHER'S GAME SHOW

8:37am

Just to give you an idea of how British I've become in the short time I've been here, I was woken by a nightmare this morning. In it, I was appearing on a quiz show. I kind of knew the rules and I was playing adequately, but I felt that I was a little clumsy and I was frightfully embarrassed for wasting people's time.

I'm certain that this dream was sparked by a real BBC quiz show I had seen yesterday. I couldn't tell you what it is called but the setup is: a spokesmodel pulls a series of random letters out of a bin and two contestants vie to complete the longest word with them. It fascinated me. For one thing, the execution was very low tech. Letters out of a bin? Two bins actually, one for consonants and one for vowels. But the only remotely flashy thing on the set is a giant clock, which counts the 30 seconds during which the contestants pick their words.

The set consists of the giant clock and a semicircular desk. At the far right of the arc sits a distinguished host (they're called “presenters” here) then there is a considerable space until the middle of the arc, where the two contestants sit; then more space and at the far other end, two young attractive judges with a stack of dictionaries. Only one of them, the girl, appears to be doing any actual work. She looks up the word, then tells one of the contestants, “unfortunately 'featured' is not spelled with two e's, but with an 'ea'. I'm so sorry, be we'll have to disallow that.” The guy shrugs and makes a polite quip.

Obviously this show has been on since the late forties.

Looking at it with fresh American eyes, I'm mystified by a few things. One, what's with all the space? Is the set also used for another quiz show that has more people? And with all that space, why keep the contestants so close together where they can see each other's word? Isn't there some better use of screen time during the thirty second countdown than shots of the players hunched over their index cards interspersed with shots of the research girl hunched over another index card and the presenter hunched over yet ANOTHER index card? And what the hell is he doing? What's on that card?

In America we'd at least make the clock digital. The host would be a 30 year old bodybuilder and the contestants would do a LOT more screaming. Especially since they'd be struggling to reach a keyboard to type in their words while being pelted with balloons and water cannons. Oh and no dictionaries. There'd be a paid plug for dictionary.com. And no matter who chose the right word, you'd vote for the winner on your cell phone. They're called “mobiles” here.

Wuthering Depths

The picture behind me, I swear to God, is the first thing you see as you walk into the Grange Strathmore, which is where I and Bill are staying. Did Da Vinci invent x-ray spex too?

Had a very short day yesterday. Plane landed at 3 after a 10-hour flight, then it was two hours getting through immigration. I did the best I could, trying to flirt with women in the line maze, but it still quite a slog. I noticed that a lot of Asian women were wearing fliter masks, an indication that the Swine flu is still taken seriously in coutries where there haven't been any infections.

Anyway, then it was a pleasant tube ride on the Picadilly line to Grosnevor Station (other terminus: Cockfosters, though if my fellow passengers weren't smirking at the announcements neither would I) and then just a short hour and a half stroll as I attempted to naviagate to a hotel which I now know is 2 minutes away. I was going to count on my GPS device, but it had discharged somehow so I had to rely on, you know, MAPS. And helpful locals.

Incidentally, almost nobody who has a service job in this town is English. I'm really visiting Europe.

Anyway, after separate ordeals just getting to the hotel, combined with the jet lag, Bill and I managed a little dinner and got to bed.

Today we took a walking tour through Mayfair (like Beverly Hills with more history and less bad taste) visted with Justine our high school drama teacher, and finished up the day with our first big show, a Bollywood Musical version of Wuthering Heights. That's how they're selling it anyway, though I missed the crazy amped-up energy of your typical Bollywood offering. On the other hand, that would have been a pretty bad choice for telling that particular story, so maybe it all works out for the best. I was happy enough with the result; though maybe it was the jet lag or maybe it was the pacing but that first act could be a lot snappier.

Tomorrow, I make a pilgrimmage to Canary Wharf, known to tourists as a nice shopping area and to Torchwood fans as the location of a convenient trans-dimensional rift. In the future, everything changes!

Greetings From LAX

Yes hello from the airport that DWELL magazine calls the worst in the United States.

"It is best described as a collection of drab terminals 
connected by a traffic jam, which starts 
out on I-405 and coagulates on a circular drive that loops around the Landmark Theme Building," the magazine says, adding that the Theme Building, "looking like something a 1950s sci-fi set designer dreamed up, is LAX’s only architectural positive.

I'm no more surprised than LAX officials by this ranking. For years whenever I have arrived at any other airport I've ever been to, my first thought was, "wow, this terminal is cool!" It's only now that I realize that they're cool by comparison. I always check out Burbank airport first when making travel plans; and I'm always disappointed to learn that apparently there are no direct flights between Burbank and anywhere. Las Vegas, for example has two connecting flights and costs $350 from Burbank. From LAX it's 40 minutes and costs $100. Clearly some kind of anti competitive strategy is at work in this town.

Oh yeah. Flying to London for the week, thanks for asking. I got high school friends who have emigrated, specifically my drama teacher Justine and Smartest Guy In Class Phil, who was Ambassador to Tunisia and is now employed in Great Britain at our state department. If you get all your news from Fox you'll be surprised to learn that our president's trip to England last month went quite smoothly. I am looking forward to embassy food.

Hopefully I'll be too busy to blog, but compulsive graphomaniac that I am I wouldn't count on it.

By the way one thing I will say about LAX -- this is the first time I've ever been able to scar up free wireless access. It's probably just this terminal, but I/m grateful nonetheless. I'd have had to upload from the hotel otherwise!